by Glen Craney
“Mighty generous of you, son.”
He pops out his dentures and wipes off the soap film and starts gumming his lips the way old men do. I always thought that was kind of funny-looking, sort of like a large-mouth bass trying to say something important.
The telephone rings in its explosion of a bell. In his waning years, my grandfather installed a ringer box over the recliner where he would sit and read; the only time he watched TV was to see my ex-wife, Elsbeth, on CNN, or he would take in the occasional program on the History Channel or Nova, the PBS science show. I remember the first time Grandfather met Elsbeth, after we were married, after my grandmother died. That was when I realized I couldn’t determine whether Grandfather was a first-class flirt or a world-class charmer or whether you could be both and get away with it. “Really, sir, I’m an anchor, so I just dictate the news,” she said with humility that rang as fake as margarine on a butter plate. “I fought dictators the best part of my life,” Grandfather giggled, then turned to me with that twinkle in his blue eyes. “You’re screwed, m’boy.”
Jupe nearly jumps off the couch. “Goddamn phone rings like a prison alarm.”
“All too familiar, Jupe, I know, but do you really want another oral cleansing? Volusia takes special exception to the Name-in-vain stuff.”
Seeing as how Jupe isn’t about to move and Volusia takes little interest in answering Grandfather’s phone, I reach across my grandfather’s recliner as best I can and pick up the handset.
“Duncan.”
“Narrows it down. Do you know how many Duncans live around there?”
“I’ll be damned.” I look at my father, trying to hide my astonishment, even though I won’t tell him my half-brother, Jerod, is on the other end. “Where are you?”
“Doesn’t that maid—what’s-her-name, Volvo, right?—still carry around those little soaps, in case you curse like that?”
“Seriously. Where are you? Are you here, in New Cumbria? Coming home? Grandfather’s funeral was today. Everyone asked about you.”
“I have no idea where I am.” I hear an impish laugh in the background and hope against hope that he is alone.
“Describe your location to me.”
“It’s an airport.”
“Are you alone?”
“Is Dad there?” he asks.
“After a fashion.”
“We’re in Wrenton, so I’ll see you in about an hour, hour and a half.”
“We?”
“I’ll rent a car, drive down to Grandfather’s and we’ll catch up then.” Click.
I will, in fact, be damned.
Jupe jolts up as if Grandfather just told him to. “Who was that?”
I roll back toward the kitchen, making certain this time that Volusia really can hear me; I know all the creaks in the floor between the living room, across the formal dining room and through the pantry, and I hit every single one with determined alacrity.
She meets me before I reach the pantry, where I tell her of Jerod’s pending arrival. Her laughter detonates the darkness.
“That little sonofabitch,” she says. “He’s coming home.”
“He’s bringing someone.”
“Unh-unh, not here, he’s not. Ain’t going to be no unhitched ho’s in your grandparents’ house, no. I don’t care if it is over their dead bodies. He’s welcome to put her up in the Bait Shack”—that’s what they call the New Cumbria Motor Lodge off U.S. 36 Bypass three miles west of town—“and he can stay here if he wants, but them two aren’t staying under the same hallowed roof. That’d be over my dead body.”
Jerod really is on his way home. He manages to miss the biggest death of his life. Everybody in town would love to give him hell about that, but everybody loves Jerod too much to give him hell about much of anything. So I have to wonder why he is bothering to come at all now.
“Volusia?” I ask, pulling her into the kitchen so that my father won’t hear, not that he could or care even if he did. “I need to ask you a huge favor.”
“You know I’d do most anything for you, Mister Randol, you almost the only one roun’ here who could be considered sane in this man’s outfit.”
That’s what my grandfather occasionally called his tiny army of sons and grandsons. Hearing those words, I miss him now more bitterly, more painfully than ever.
“Never mind.”
Perhaps she knows what I’m thinking, that I’d like her to pull me upstairs, but it’s late, almost eleven o’clock. Besides, the only way I could get back downstairs would be through inglorious thumps of gravity. I almost burst out laughing at the thought, catheter and bag flying every which way. Volusia looks at me as if I’ve finally lost my mind.
She’s exhausted, still with too many things to worry about before getting home: what to do about Jupe, still crunched in the sofa; how to handle Jerod and his latest bimbo in the event they try to stay in the house together, and how much she’s getting paid for her extraordinary hours. And missing Grandfather with steely disconsolation. Her day has been too long.
Right now we have to get Jupe into my grandparents’ bedroom, where, by rights, he can live to the end of his days, which, also by rights, could be tomorrow. And I have to wait up for Jerod.
“I could ask you to help get Dad in to bed for me.”
“You could ask me to wheel you in to Hell for an ice-cream cone.”
“Mind staying here for a sec?” I roll into my grandfather’s room and open his walnut dresser, where I keep his checkbook, then back into the kitchen. In the callous fluorescent light over the breakfast table, I write Volusia a check for a hundred dollars, which seems generous for her work. “Beats the forty-six dollars a month my grandfather used to pay his cook in China.”
Without so much as looking at it, she folds the check and slides it into the white blouse of her uniform. “Assuming you paid me what I think you did, adjusted for inflation, the Oriental fella made only a little bit better than six bucks a day less than me. Somethin’ to think about, I reckon.”
Volusia turns to leave through the back door, beaming a victory smile at me. Over her shoulder, she adds: “Old Chinese proverb, Mister Randol: ‘Wealth is but dung, useful only when spread.’”
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A Note on the Front Cover Art
With the generous permission of his daughters, the front cover incorporates a painting titled the money lenders by David Boyd (1924-2011). Boyd was a distinguished Australian artist who began his career as a ceramicist and transitioned seamlessly to paintings. As the fourth child of four generations of artists, he and his four siblings grew up in a creative environment in which pottery, drawing, painting, poetry, and music were encouraged as intrinsic to daily life. On the family property, Open Country, at Murrumbeena in Victoria, Australia, each Boyd family member developed a personal artistic response to the Australian environment and their family life. Boyd was honored by the Australian Government with an Order of Australia in 2008 and in August 2012 an exhibition celebrating his enormous contribution to art and culture was curated by Eva Breuer Art Dealer and held at the S.H Ervin Gallery Sydney Australia. A commemorative book, David Boyd: his work, his life, his family, was published by Eva Breuer Art Dealer to mark this exceptional exhibition.
Copyright 2014 by Glen Craney and John Jeter.
Cover and book design by Glen Craney
Cover Art based on David Boyd’s work, reproduced with the permission of Lucinda Boyd and Cassandra Boyd. Image courtesy of Eva Breuer Art Dealer.
This book is a work of fiction. Apart from the historical figures, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wis
hing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquires to Brigid’s Fire Press at www.brigidsfire.com.
Published in the United States
FIRST EBOOK EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Craney, Glen and Jeter, John
The Lucifer Genome: A Cas Fielding Mystery-Thriller
ISBN 978-0-9816484-8-4
1. Political thriller 2. Mystery fiction 3. Genetic engineering-Fiction. 4. Science Fiction. 5. Meteorites-Fiction. 6. Black Stone of Kaaba-Fiction. 7. Cloning-Fiction 8. Apocalyptic fiction
Brigid’s Fire Press
www.brigidsfire.com